Search results for "Brain weight"

Re-thinking the effects of body size on the study of brain size evolution

2018

Body size correlates with most structural and functional components of an organism’s phenotype – brain size being a prime example of allometric scaling with animal size. Therefore, comparative studies of brain evolution in vertebrates rely on controlling for the scaling effects of body size variation on brain size variation by calculating brain weight/body weight ratios. Differences in the brain size-body size relationship between taxa are usually interpreted as differences in selection acting on the brain or its components, while selection pressures acting on body size, which are among the most prevalent in nature, are rarely acknowledged, leading to conflicting and confusing conclusions. …